The Arkansas Lottery recently unveiled a slate of four new scratch-off tickets, according to information posted on the Lottery’s website.
The tickets sell for anywhere from $1 to $10, and advertise prizes up to $200,000.
As we have written many times, the Arkansas Lottery has a habit of rolling out a steady stream of new lottery games every month.
The Lottery also spends more money on prizes than most state-run lotteries, and it relies very heavily on scratch-off tickets for revenue.
Players who buy the Arkansas Lottery’s newest $10 scratch-off ticket hoping to win $200,000 have roughly a two in three chance of losing their money. The odds of winning the jackpot are a staggering one in 440,000.
As we have said time and time again, scratch-off tickets like these are linked to problem gambling and gambling addiction.
A 2015 study in Canada described them as “paper slot machines.”
A 2018 study published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions found a link between how often a person played scratch-off tickets and the severity of a person’s gambling problem.
Despite all of this, the Arkansas Lottery continues to roll out new scratch-off tickets every month and budgets 70% of its revenue for prizes in an ongoing effort to prop up lottery ticket sales.
Photo Credit: Powerball and Mega Millions Lottery Billboard in Missouri by Tony Webster, on Flickr.
